Residents of Qalacha village in northern Afghanistan meet
to discuss attacks they say came from neighboring villages where different
ethnic groups live.

CHESHMEH-YE SHIR, Afghanistan  From the road, this
hamlet looks wrecked and deserted. Doors and windows have been ripped from the
dried-mud dwellings. There are no sheep or other signs of life.

But as Mohammed Azim, 46, leads the way, heads peer out
from around corners. Soon there's a crowd of men and a handful of women and
children watching from a distance as Azim explains their caution.

These people, many of them his relatives, are in hiding.
"No Pashtun can just journey out of his house," he says.

Human Rights Watch agrees. It says Pashtuns, the dominant
ethnic group in most of Afghanistan  except in the north  are being
beaten, raped and robbed here by armed gangs of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.
The human rights group, based in New York City, says it has no figure on the
number of victims, but its investigators have collected anecdotal evidence that
indicates dozens of Pashtuns have been killed in the assaults.

The violence has emptied some Pashtun villages in the north,
raising the possibility of an ethnic-cleansing campaign to push them out of
the region.

Pashtuns, distinguished from other Afghans by their turbans,
represent 40% of the Afghan population. The Taliban regime, which imposed
a puritanical form of Islam on the country for five years, was dominated by
Pashtuns. When the Taliban controlled much of Afghanistan, the 1 million Pashtuns
living in the northern reaches of the country, where they are outnumbered by
other ethnic groups, had a measure of protection and privilege. With the Taliban
gone, the northern Pashtuns are isolated, vulnerable and suffering for their
former protected status.

Afghanistan's interim government has set up a commission
to investigate allegations of abuses against Pashtuns. At the same time, there
is evidence Pashtuns may have committed atrocities against other ethnic groups
during the Taliban years. A United Nations team is examining sites near Bamiyan,
an ethnic Hazara area in central Afghanistan where groups of men were buried.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan,
met in March with northern warlords to discuss interethnic conflict. Asked about
human rights abuses, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told the United
Arab Emirates publication Gulf News Friday, "Whatever they are, wherever
they are, they must be probed."

Vengeance and politics

There is no evidence of mass, government-sponsored slaughters
like those in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But the accounts of abuses
make efforts to contain the violence all the more critical at a pivotal time
for Afghanistan's reconstruction. The still-weak central government, which is
scheduled to hand power over to a transitional government next month, fears
the lawlessness will drive away international aid and investment.

The initial attacks on Pashtuns began in November, just
as the Taliban lost power, and seemed calculated to exact vengeance for the
past. Today, politics also appears to play a role in the continuing intimidation
 part of an effort to curb Pashtun power in the future government. The
outlines of the new governing body will be determined at a national meeting
of elders, a loya jirga, held in Kabul next month.

Isolated in their hamlets, surrounded by hostile neighbors,
the northern Pashtuns say they are terrorized every day. The raiders usually
come in the morning, Azim says. Typically, about 50 men with assault rifles
and rocket-propelled grenades arrive in trucks. They take food, livestock and
anything else they want from the 50 families in this village.

The villagers flee to the fields and gullies nearby while
their homes are looted. Anyone who stays behind risks death. Ghausuddin, 27,
who goes by one name, pulls up a pant leg and a shirt sleeve to show gunshot
wounds he blames on the raiders. He says he was shot when he refused to give
the raiders information about other villagers. By now, almost nothing is left
in Cheshmeh-ye Shir. So there is a growing suspicion that what started as simple
revenge and greed has grown into a calculated campaign to deny the Pashtuns
a full voice when Afghanistan's new government is chosen.

Local meetings to choose regional representatives for the
national council meeting in Kabul are underway. Assaults against Pashtuns could
corrupt the process, says Peter Bouckaert, a Human Rights Watch researcher.
"If northern Pashtuns are unable to take part in district or regional meetings
to choose their representatives, then the validity of the entire loya jirga
process will be called into question," he says.

No security guarantees

There are some signs that the rash of interethnic violence
that followed the fall of the Taliban may be receding. Rashid Dostum, an ethnic
Uzbek, deputy defense minister and one of the best known of northern Afghanistan's
warlords, has promised to keep his troops in control and says he has dismissed
several abusive commanders. He also announced a truce with a rival Tajik commander
that would demilitarize Mazar-e-Sharif, a northern city where many Pashtuns
live.

But others allied with the Northern Alliance, the coalition
that fought with the United States against the Taliban, say they fear Pashtuns
could dominate the new government the loya jirga is supposed to create.
It's an outcome unacceptable to many Uzbeks, Hazaras and Tajiks who fought to
drive out the Taliban.

Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik who was part of the
Northern Alliance and president of Afghanistan before the Taliban took power,
accuses the international community of trying to deny his fighters  the
legendary mujahedin who drove the Soviets out in 1989  the political power
they deserve. The national council meeting will be "a sham," he says, designed
to empower "outsiders" now ruling the country.

Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghan leader chosen in December
at a conference in Germany, is an ethnic Pashtun. The top ministers in his government
are ethnic Tajiks. But the government has fewer than 600 soldiers, fewer than
many regional warlords. So Karzai's power does not extend far beyond the capital's
boundaries.

Life for Pashtuns in areas where they are a minority and
don't have the protection of the federal government has been rough, says a 38-year-old
shopkeeper from a village in Chimtal district just outside Mazar-e-Sharif, a
city near Afghanistan's border with Uzbekistan. "There were no Taliban in our
village," says the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But our houses
were looted and 15 to 20 villagers killed" by soldiers from the Northern Alliance.

At first, the village was abandoned. Fearful residents
stayed with relatives or at U.N. refugee camps. Some are moving back. But if
there's more intimidation, they may leave permanently, the shopkeeper says.

He says the only solution is to bring an international
military force to the region like the one patrolling in Kabul. But Western nations
don't want to pay for an expansion of the force. And there is concern that they,
like other international forces deployed here over the centuries, eventually
will be seen as invaders and attacked. Already, the Kabul patrols have been
subjected to sniper fire and rocket attacks.

Creation of a multiethnic Afghan army that could keep security
around the country has just started. It's expected to take several years to
develop a force able to challenge local thugs, not to mention powerful warlords.

"You can tell that the situation is not good," the shopkeeper
says. "There is going to be no peace if there are going to be no peacekeepers."